United States: A Visual History

The United States declared independence from Britain in 1776 and expanded from the Atlantic to the Pacific through purchase, treaty, settlement and war, dispossessing Native nations along the way. Overseas acquisitions after 1898, victory in two world wars and the Cold War, and a global network of bases and alliances made it the dominant power of the late twentieth century. Whether it is an 'empire' is debated; its territorial reach, military footprint and economic weight put it in any list of history's great powers.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is United States. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Land area of the United States

Includes territories; the dip after 1946 is Philippine independence.

Timeline of the United States

1. 1776
   Declaration of Independence
2. 1803
   Louisiana Purchase828,000 square miles from France.
3. 1848
   Mexican CessionCalifornia and the Southwest.
4. 1865
   Civil War endsSlavery abolished.
5. 1898
   Spanish-American WarOverseas territories acquired.
6. 1945
   Victory in World War IIThe atomic age; the United Nations.
7. 1969
   Moon landing
8. 1991
   Soviet Union collapsesSole superpower.
9. 2001
   9/11Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq follow.

Continental expansion

The Treaty of Paris (1783) gave the new republic land to the Mississippi. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled it; Florida (1819), Texas (1845), Oregon (1846) and the Mexican Cession after the Mexican-American War (1848) took it to the Pacific. Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867. This expansion was accomplished by treaty and force against hundreds of Native American nations, who were removed to reservations.

The Civil War (1861-1865) settled that the union was permanent and ended slavery. Railways, immigration and industry then made the US the world's largest economy by about 1890.

Overseas empire and world war

In 1898 the US annexed Hawaii and, after defeating Spain, took Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, fighting a brutal war to hold the latter. It built the Panama Canal and intervened repeatedly in the Caribbean and Central America. It entered World War I in 1917 and World War II in 1941, emerging in 1945 with half the world's industrial output and the atomic bomb.

Superpower

The Cold War built the architecture of American power: NATO, the dollar system, alliances with Japan and South Korea, and wars in Korea and Vietnam. The Soviet collapse in 1991 left the US as the sole superpower. The wars in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Iraq (2003-2011) and the rise of China have raised questions about the durability of that position, but the US remains the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and its most powerful military.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Soviet Union (USSR) (1922 to 1991)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• Danish colonial empire (1536 to 1953)

Wars of the same era and region

• American Revolution (1775 to 1783)
• American Civil War (1861 to 1865)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• World War II (1939 to 1945)
• World War I (1914 to 1918)
• Vietnam War (1955 to 1975)
• Korean War (1950 to 1953)
• Cuban wars of independence and Spanish-American War (1868 to 1898)
• Philippine-American War (1899 to 1902)

8 surprising things about the United States

1. The Louisiana Purchase cost about 3 cents an acre; Napoleon sold it to fund war with Britain.
2. The US has fought a declared war only five times; every conflict since 1945 has been undeclared.
3. Alaska was mocked as 'Seward's Folly' when bought for 7.2 million dollars in 1867.
4. The Philippines was the only large American colony; the war to subdue it (1899-1902) killed perhaps 200,000 Filipinos.
5. The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war.
6. American troops have been stationed continuously in Germany, Japan and South Korea since the 1940s and 1950s.
7. The dollar's role as global reserve currency dates from the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement.
8. The US Constitution, in force since 1789, is the oldest written national constitution still in use.

Sources

• United States Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Territorial evolution of the United States Wikipedia
• Milestones in the History of US Foreign Relations US Office of the Historian
• Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire (2019) Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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